From the 1930s to the
present day, British children's historicals offer
a rich field to the reader and collector. There
is a wealth of meticulously researched, exciting
stories, attractively produced and illustrated,
which are relatively easy to find and still quite
inexpensive. Many titles are wonderful
introductions to a particular period of history
or an historical character. Some of the authors
discussed here are still in print in modern
paperbacks, but older hardbacks can still be
found for a modest sum. Many of these authors
were published in the USA and elsewhere as well
as in the UK. Each writer discussed here has a
unique voice, and in their time they were
innovators. They still receive favourable
critical attention.

Geoffrey
Trease (1909 - 1998)
(A version of this article first appeared in 1998
in Folly Magazine. The full version appeared in
Solander magazine in June, 1999.)

Geoffrey
Trease died in January 1998 after a writing career
spanning more than sixty years and over a hundred books.
Novelist, biographer, critic and sometime schoolmaster,
he was a defining force in 20th century children's
historical fiction, plucking the genre from the
post-Henty doldrums and casting historical writing into a
new shape altogether.

Robert Geoffrey
Trease was born and grew up in Nottingham, the son of a
wine- merchant and a doctor's daughter, and was the
youngest of three brothers. He was an avid reader,
working through all the classic adventure stories (The
Coral Island, The Swiss Family Robinson) and large doses
of The Boy's Own Paper from an early age, as well as
Shakespeare. This mixture later influenced his own
writing:

"I acquired
as a reader....the bias which was to determine my
direction long afterwards as a writer". (A Whiff of
Burnt Boats)

After attending
a small private school he was a pupil at Nottingham High
School. Here, History was his best subject, though he was
drawn somewhat unwillingly into Classics. In 1928 he went
up to Queen's College, Oxford to read Classics, and
seemed set on a brilliant academic career. He made many
friends in Oxford but his studies were not so
satisfactory; Trease found his tutor uncongenial and his
subject dry. After his first year he realised that with
the formal study of Classics, he was following the wrong
path, and in 1929 he left Oxford, uncertain of his future
plans. A friend's offer of social work in an East End
Settlement provided a temporary solution; during these
months Trease decided that writing was what he really
wanted to do, and then followed a series of London jobs
as he tried to break into journalism. He worked for a few
months as a literary assistant in one of the first
mail-order book clubs; then spent two years doing hack
work on a Bloomsbury "puff-paper", while his
spare time was given to his own first attempts at a
novel. This was followed by a brief year teaching History
and English at a private school in Essex - still pursuing
his writing in his own time. Here he met his wife Marian
Boyer, herself a teacher. In 1933 they married, moving to
Bath where friends had offered them accommodation, and
gambling on Trease now being able to earn a living
through full-time writing. Finances were shaky as Trease
sold short articles and worked on a novel - then came a
breakthrough. He approached a left-wing publisher,
Lawrence & Wishart, with an idea for a children's
historical novel, to be written in everyday language and
from the points of view of ordinary people. This fresh
idea was immediately accepted, and the book about Robin
Hood which drew on his own knowledge of Nottingham was
published as Bows Against the Barons in 1934. The modern
style and egalitarian approach was very different from
the sort of historical writing for children that had
appeared until now, and received some favourable reviews.
Other books soon followed, and almost by accident,
Geoffrey Trease's career as a children's writer was
launched.

I first
encountered Geoffrey Trease in the late 1970s, through a
well-thumbed school copy of Cue for Treason, which we
were reading in class; I remember enjoying the lively
characterisation and briskly moving story. There must be
thousands who had a similar experience at school, and who
owe most of their knowledge of a particular historical
period to a Geoffrey Trease book read as a teenager. His
books have the happy combination of meticulous research
and accessible, exciting stories, with believable
characters and, unusual for the time, strong female
roles. All these features distinguished him when his
first children's book was published in 1934. Prior to
this, children's historical fiction had tended towards
the romantically sentimental for girls (such as Dorothea
Moore, Cecily's Highwayman ,1914, and In the Reign of the
Red Cap,1924), or the empire-building potboiler for boys
(such as the works of Percy F Westerman and G A Henty);
ill-researched, stereotypical and with gadzookery
abounding. Kings and cavaliers were always right, there
were duels and pirates in every other chapter, the
British were top nation, and there was a great deal of
"ho, varlet" and "verily, madam".
Trease changed all that, particularly the language; his
characters speak in ordinary modern English (though
avoiding any out-of-period slang) and there is a thread
of equality strongly felt in all his writing, both in
terms of male/female roles, and in a pressing towards
social justice and a fight against the abuse of power and
privilege. He was aiming to move right away from a
romanticised type of what he called "false
history"; trying to combine historical truth with
the best elements of the adventure yarns he had enjoyed
as a boy:

"...at one
level, Bows Against the Barons was written because I
wanted to expose even to children the falsity of the
romantic Merrie England image. But when I sent my hero
stealing shadowlike through the bracken, creeping
disguised into the villain's castle.....I was reliving
the fantasies of my own boyhood and enjoying the work on
this level, as much as the conscious fulfillment of my
social purpose. I was certainly not deliberately sugaring
a political pill". (A Whiff of Burnt Boats,
autobiography)

Although not
written as political messages, his earliest books were
strongly left wing and egalitarian in tone; Bows Against
the Barons and Comrades for the Charter were published by
Lawrence & Wishart, who were known at the time for
their specialist left-wing interests. In 1935 Trease
found that Bows Against the Barons was being published in
Communist Russia, which did not recognise international
copyright laws. Fees were available but frozen in
roubles, and the only way to benefit from this was via a
visit to Russia. Through his publishers, Geoffrey and
Marian Trease were able to obtain visas and in 1935 spent
five months travelling in Russia. Geoffrey Trease was an
active member of his local Labour Party at the time, and
the trip to Russia fuelled some speculation that the
Treases had Communist interests, but in his autobiography
A Whiff of Burnt Boats, Geoffrey Trease makes his own
position clear:

"I myself
never seriously considered joining the Communist
Party.....Ingenuous I might be, but I noticed early what
happened to individuals who left the Party on a sincere
difference of opinion....It is fair to say that no one,
either in England or in Russia, ever asked me to join.
Left-wing idealists, I came to realise, were of more use
outside..."

After his first
few books he took a much more objective approach, though
he always tried to portray historical events as they were
experienced by ordinary people, and as they related to
modern life. He had a strong sense of the historical
continuum; history for him was not something packaged
tidily away in the past, but a living thing whose themes
and influence were felt in the contemporary world. He was
a man of liberal and left-wing sympathies, and his
writing reflects this; his early books must have been a
refreshing (or alarming, depending on your point of
view!) antidote to the "duty and empire" type
of writing which preceded him. In this way Geoffrey
Trease was a little ahead of his time; social changes
were coming, with the war and its aftermath, but in the
mid 1930s much of the world map was still pink and the
British Empire still a reality. Children's books often
tend to reflect social trends sometime after they happen,
rather than setting new directions, but Geoffrey Trease
was a writer in the vanguard of exploring a less
anglocentric and class-ridden view of the world.

Objectivity and
accuracy have come to be expected now of any good writer
of historical fiction; when Geoffrey Trease started
writing, these features had not yet become norms. His
unsentimental, meticulous approach did much to change
this; he aimed for realism and plausibility and generally
achieved both. Anachronisms and other errors of detail
were rare; occasionally in earlier books such as The Grey
Adventurer (1942), which deals with the 17th century
settlement of North Carolina, he wrote about places he
had not visited,but later he resolved only to write about
countries he had some personal experience of. This
approach to research added colour and depth to his work,
allowing him to draw on his memories of travels abroad,
as well as his love of the countryside nearer to home.

Although his
main success was with historical fiction, Trease was a
versatile author, who also wrote biographies for adults
and children, literary criticism, school stories, adult
novels, detective/adventure stories, and plays. Some of
these, such as his four adult novels and his set of
children's mystery/detective stories, are largely
forgotten nowadays except by collectors; but they met
with moderate success on publication, and indeed all his
work is distinguished by a competent, well-crafted
approach. In assessing his significance as an innovative
writer however, there are three areas of particular
interest. One of these was his invention of a new form of
the school story, starting with No Boats on Bannermere
(1949). There were five Bannerdale books; they are
readable and realistic stories about a group of friends,
and their lives at home and school. They are also
historically significant, being the first modern school
stories set in a day school, where home is also important
and school is not the centre of the characters' lives.
The characters grow older and develop, and more adult
emotions are touched upon. This was an important step in
the development of the school story, moving from the
boarding school/enclosed community environment, towards
an approach which saw school as one aspect of life rather
than the stage on which all activity took place. Another
key development was that they were about ordinary
children leading fairly ordinary lives; a step away from
princesses in disguise, difficult new girls, clifftop
rescues, form cricket matches and other stock ingredients
of earlier school stories. Unlike most school stories,
they included boys and girls. Prior to Bannerdale the
attitude of publishers had rather been that no-one would
want to read about day schools, and about ordinary
children in a mixed-sex group; Geoffrey Trease showed
that realism was both readable and marketable.

A second
particularly significant aspect of Trease's writing is
that of literary criticism. His survey of children's
writers, Tales out of School (1949) was ground-breaking;
before this there had been no wide-ranging survey of 20th
century children's literature, and this single volume
paved the way for what has today become the mini-industry
of children's literary criticism. Geoffrey Trease had a
discerning eye for children's books likely to stand the
test of time and many of those he mentions in Tales out
of School are still in print and have become classics. He
is less than complimentary about formulaic fiction and
sloppy writing; in other authors he valued the qualities
also to be found in his own writing, such as a precision
of style, coupled with an approach which combined realism
with imagination.

He found his
greatest success, however, in historical fiction. He had
a love of the theatre, was involved in amateur dramatics,
and had long cherished an ambition to be a playwright but
this was not to be; after a successful one-act play,
After the Tempest, was produced in 1938, his next play
Colony, showing at the Unity Theatre in Kings Cross in
1939 and due to transfer to the West End, was suspended
due to the outbreak of war, and this interrupted an
embryo theatrical career, although he did go on to write
five plays for radio in the 1940s and 50s. While waiting
to be called up for army service, Trease briefly returned
to teaching in a private school, before joining the Army
Education Corps for the duration of the war. His time was
spend in England and then in India, lecturing to army
units; while his parallel career as a children's writer
continued to flourish. Several books were written during
quiet periods on duty; Trumpets in the West (1942) was
written during his time in India, with minimal access to
textbooks for research.

His lifelong
love of theatre and the arts did however find an outlet
through his books, many, such as Cue for Treason , and
The Crown of Violet have a theatrical setting; other
topics include the retrieving of a valuable manuscript
(The Hills of Varna) or the development of music in a
particular period (Trumpets in the West, which features
the composer Henry Purcell) . These titles where theatre
and the arts are central, are in my estimation his best
writing, and are among my personal favourites; Trease's
love and knowledge of his subject shines through, there
is plenty of interesting detail about the development of
theatre and culture in different settings, and his boy
and girl protagonists are spirited creations. If pressed
to pick one favourite it would have to be Cue for
Treason, which was the first Geoffrey Trease book I read,
and in my teenage years prompted my interest in
historical fiction and social history Also very enjoyable
are the many titles which used well-known historical
characters, military and otherwise; Samuel Pepys is a
major character in Popinjay Stairs , while Follow My
Black Plume and Thunder of Valmy cover the Garibaldi
campaigns.

His books ranged
widely through different periods and settings, from Rome
in the second century A.D. (Word to Caesar), to the
Channel Islands under wartime occupation (Tomorrow is a
Stranger), to 1980s Romania (Song for a Tattered Flag) to
Russia in the perestroika period (Shadow under the Sea).
The central character is usually an older boy or young
man, encountering the difficulties of the adult world for
the first time. Geoffrey Trease also usually cast a girl
or young woman in a strong supporting role. Typically the
plot involves conflicting loyalties and a fight against
some sort of injustice; the main characters have to make
decisions about allegiances and priorities, and in doing
so they mature. Along the way there is plenty of action;
fight, flight, acting and espionage, conflict military
and political. We also see the characters being
introduced to new ideas and challenges, whether artistic
or idealistic. Endings are positive but not idealised;
the main characters are generally on the brink of the
adult world so there is a sense of new complexities and
responsibilities as well as new opportunities. There's
often a sense of the characters' lives continuing
"off- stage", after we have read the last page.
Keen to get away from the traditional division of
"boys' books and girls' books", Trease found
that by using this structure and including both male and
female characters, he could produce books which appealed
to both sexes. His heroines are strong and adventurous,
often highly educated, and within the limits of what was
plausible for the period, they are independent. In a time
before it was usual to do so in children's writing, he
explored the roles of girls and women in different ages
and societies; no doubt many a schoolgirl reader was thus
encouraged to expect that adventures were not only for
boys.

Always
supportive of other writers, as chairman of the Society
of Authors he steered it through the dispute over public
lending rights in the 1970s. He had many friends among
children's writers and publishers, and wrote a book of
very practical advice to aspiring young authors, The
Young Writer (1961).

Geoffrey Trease
never retired as a writer; he continued to write new
books at regular intervals until a few months before the
end of his life; in 1997 he had four books waiting for
publication. In his eighties he was very much in touch
with contemporary politics, choosing recent periods of
political instability, such as Romania under Ceaucescu,
as settings for his later books. Whilst some of his books
are long out of print, others are still available in
paperback, several of course quite recently published,
and still receive favourable critical attention. His
books are a pleasure to collectors too, with sixty years
worth of titles to choose from; though some titles are
hard to find, early editions have remained relatively
inexpensive. Some of the earlier, pre- 1960 works have
very attractive covers, whilst paperback editions and
wide distribution in libraries have ensured the
availability of some of his most popular titles to this
generation.

Geoffrey
Trease's distinctive contribution to historical fiction
included paving the way for other writers, by
establishing standards. If there is a criticism to be
made of his writing I would say that it lacks emotional
depth; intensity wasn't his style, and his understated
approach has its own strengths. However, his passion for
accuracy and good style, and his objective approach,
helped to set standards of what was expected of
historical fiction, and meant that authors such as
Rosemary Sutcliff, Cynthia Harnett, and Barbara Willard,
were enabled to explore characters in other ways, within
a framework of historical truth.

Geoffrey
Trease's career was set against the background of a long
and happy marriage to Marian Boyer. Visits to his
publishers, lectures and research trips were interspersed
with periods writing at home, and long walks on the
Malvern Hills which he loved. After some years in Bath
and Abingdon, the Treases lived in Malvern for over
thirty years; in later years they moved back to Bath to
be nearer their daughter, Jocelyn. For more about his
life and work, I can heartily recommend his excellent
autobiographies, A Whiff of Burnt Boats (1971), and
Laughter at the Door (1974). These are very readable,
humorous accounts of his development and career as a
writer, his friends and interests and the factors which
influenced and encouraged his work. These two volumes are
out of print but are still available through libraries. A
third volume of memoirs, Farewell the Hills, was
published privately in 1998 for his family and friends;
it is not available for public sale but copies are being
donated to reference libraries for research. This last
volume deals mainly with his later years and is a worthy
companion to the previous two.

Special thanks
to Geoffrey Trease's daughter Jocelyn Payne, who so
kindly sent me a copy of his final memoirs Farewell the
Hills; a lovely memento of a writer who will be long
remembered.

It is rare that
I ever feel like starting a campaign for the republishing
of a book. This idea has not come to me purely in spirit
of altruism; it is a case of practical necessity. As a
teacher I want this book back in the classroom in all
schools in Britain. The relatively new National
Curriculum for English demands that the younger students
get to know about Shakespeare and his background. I
cant think of a better book than Geoffrey
Treases marvellous Elizabethan adventure as a way
of taking bright young minds into the world of acting and
Shakespeares plays. As if that were not enough the
story, the characters, the settings, the political
intrigue, and the moral dilemmas all cry out for a new
audience. It is a tale of ordinary people and of lords,
ladies, actors, courtiers, traitors, loyalists, country
farmers and town dwellers, puritans and libertines. It is
a spy story; it is a love story; it is an escape story;
it is a mountain climbing story; it is a river story. I
could go on and probably will.

Above all it is
the story of Peter Brownrigg, an ordinary boy from the
Lake District, and what happens one night when he joins
his father and their neighbours in an act of rebellion
against a local greedy landowner. After a night of high
drama and adventure it becomes the story of two runaways,
Peter and Kit, one of whom is definitely not quite what
we first expect. From the wilds of Cumberland we are
taken the length of England in the company of strolling
actors and see the precarious and sometimes downright
unpleasant life that they led. The scenes in Elizabethan
London are particularly engrossing and a certain William
Shakespeare enters the plot. Chapter fourteen opens with
the words,

"That was
how I entered the Secret Service of the Queen."

How and why
Peter did so you will have to read for yourself. You will
also learn how to climb a vertical wooden wall
overlooking the Thames and what the man in the yellow
suit was getting up to in his riverside assignations. We
can also puzzle over a hidden cipher in a passage of
bogus verse.

The return to
Cumbria brings a new set of dangers for Peter and Kit and
a new set of delights for the reader. We get to know the
mountains, the lakes and islands. Like the young people
in the book, the reader does not know where treachery
will rear its ugly head next. The death of a friend, the
kidnap and escape and the horseback race to London to
save the life of the Virgin Queen follow pell-mell to an
unusual but highly satisfying climax.

The story is
made all the more appealing because the young central
characters are depicted "warts and all". Peter,
the narrator figure, reveals his own weaknesses and
short-comings. Kit, his companion, suffers from both
pride and vanity. The picture given of Queen Elizabeth is
also not idealised and some of the villains can be
respected for the cause they support in total conviction.

The energy of
the book is undeniable. If you have never read it and you
have grown to adult years, it is still possible to enjoy
the uncluttered plot, the marvellous pace and the
brilliantly sketched scenes of countryside adventure and
London squalour.

If you take the bare bones of the
book's plot, brother and sister move to the Lake
District, form a gang and find buried treasure, then you
have the basics of a typical post war children's
adventure story. In the hands of Geoffrey Trease instead
you have fairly radical reworking of the holiday/school
story. Prior to it children's contemporary fiction,
featuring 'children just like us', usually meant term
time spent at boarding school, catching diamond smugglers
etc. and the holidays catching more diamond smugglers
etc.! In No Boats, Trease introduces characters that go
to normal state schools and whose lives involve the
ordinary, rather than the extraordinary. When I first
read it in early 1970s, many of the books available
either to buy or in libraries were of the same era as the
Bannerdale series. Even then they stood out to me as
being something out of the ordinary. A single parent
family, which did not rely on the missing parent being
dead on away on an expedition to the Amazon and a main
character with a disability which was covered in a matter
of fact manner, and did not get miraculously cured at the
end of the book. Children who went off to school every
day and did not have the time to spend every waking
minute doing the impossible. They must have been almost
as much as a revelation when they arrived as Trease's
Bows against Barons was in the 1930s.

The setting of the Lake District for
the story has a nice irony. Ever since Arthur Ransome it
has been the place to set the holiday adventure. Whilst I
suspect it was chosen because Trease's love of the area,
it was an interesting choice.

The plot itself is not the greatest,
but for me it is not the reason why the book is read and
re-read. Rather it is for the characters, their lives and
the sense of place, that Trease writes about. This is
what attracted me to the book when I first read it and
why good many years later I can still read it with the
same enjoyment, whilst many other children's author
seemed to have lost the magic in the intervening years.

The four main characters, Bill, Sue,
Tim and Penny are realistically drawn. They are not the
super children of mystery fiction, they have to fit the
'adventure' around every day life. They also have faults,
and the jealousies and general effects of growing up,
mean they do not always have the pure single-mindedness
found in other children's books. The world of school and
home is an integral part of the book and often the
treasure-hunting plot takes second place to this.

Whilst the plot is treasure hunting,
which has been constant theme in dozens of children's
books, most of the time it keeps close enough to reality
to not stray away from the feeling that it is grounded in
the real world.Much as I enjoyed it, I do not think it
was the best in the series, however even if it had been a
`one-off', it still would be an important book, purely
because even if it did not break the mould, it put a
large crack in it and showed that `real' children's
stories could be successful.

In the second book, Trease, abandons
the mystery plot line totally. The campaign to return the
farm to the Nelson relies on none of the usual children's
plotlines. It could almost be called a political novel,
in that Trease puts across the need for vigilance by the
public to ensure that democracy continues to work. This
probably makes the book sound very much heavier than it
really is. Trease had a light touch with his `messages'
and the reader is never preached to.

There is a strong opening of the book
with the four lost on the hills. Trease gets a gentle dig
in against the mystery story. Debating whether to
investigate a light in the derelict farmhouse. Bill says
that it if they were fictional characters then they would
be itching to see what was there and to be tied up
gagged, but it was only tiredness that stopped them
running away.In this book the relationship between the
characters begins to develop. There is a definite time
scale for the series and as they grow older so Trease
explores this.

This is especially noticeable in the
relationship betweeen Bill and Penny. This is developed
more in the later books, but the seeds of it begin to
come out in Under Black Banner. Few books that I read as
a child even attempted to show that there could be any
childhood relationships between the sexes, beyond that of
the usual stereotypes.There are number of good set pieces
in the book, which stand out as being able to be read in
their own right, the night on the hills and the Cadet
Corps training day. It is not a long book, but a lot
seems to happen. I put this down to Trease's skill as an
author, he has the ability to covey scenes in a few
paragraphs, but leave a lasting image.

Again the book's strength is that it
portrays a real world, rather than the usual mythical
children's one produced by so many writers. Whilst I feel
it is better book than the first, and probably the one I
have read most, the series does get stronger as it goes
one.

If you can get hold of a copy of any of
the books in the series (the latter ones are harder to
find though), then do try them.#

Barbara
Mary Willard was born in Brighton, Sussex in 1909, and
was educated at a convent school in Southampton. Her
father was a Shakespearean actor; she absorbed
Shakespeare from childhood and language was always
important to her. Before the war she worked briefly as an
actress and a playreader, before starting to write
fiction. Barbara Willard wrote many adult novels before
venturing into children's fiction; late in her writing
career came the historical series known as the Mantlemass
novels, and it is for these that she is now chiefly
remembered. In 1967 she published A Grove of Green Holly
(not one of the series) about a group of 17th century
travelling players, hiding from Cromwell's soldiers in
Ashdown Forest in Sussex, encountering iron workers and
forest ways. From this root came the idea of writing
about the same place and its development and change
through earlier periods of history; a concept which was
to evolve into the Mantlemass books. This series has
received much critical acclaim and has ensured Barbara
Willard a place in the mainstream of children's
historical fiction, along with writers such as Geoffrey
Trease, Rosemary Sutcliff and Cynthia Harnett. Two early
volumes were runners up for the Guardian award for
children's fiction, which she won with The Iron Lily in
1974.

I first
encountered the Mantlemass books as a teenager; I grew up
in mid-Sussex only a few miles from Ashdown forest, and
knowing the local geography gave the series an added
interest. (My copy of Keys of Mantlemass is a review copy
acquired by my father, at that time editor of a local
Sussex newspaper). I have read them many times since;
they do stand up very well to rereading as an adult.
Whilst they are written in a way that is accessible to
children and young adults, the universal themes of change
and continuity, the political and personal, ensure their
appeal to a wider audience.

The Mantlemass
series, set in the heart of Sussex in Ashdown Forest,
follows two families, the Mallorys and Medleys, through
nearly one hundred and sixty years of history, starting
in 1485 just after the Wars of the Roses, and ending in
1644 with the events of the English Civil War. The books
are strong family stories with a well-developed sense of
history and place. Barbara Willard lived in Nutley,
Sussex on the edge of Ashdown Forest for many years; she
loved the area, having known it from childhood, and her
books reflect this affection, being imbued with Sussex
history and customs and forest dialect.

The Mantlemass
novels deal with the effects of national politics on
local concerns; this is shown through successive family
generations during turbulent periods of history, when
even a remote area in the heart of Ashdown forest was not
immune from change and the influence of the wider world.
Each book can be read as a stand-alone tale, but the
complete story of the house of Mantlemass unfolds through
the series, which is best appreciated read as a whole, in
correct reading order.

The publication
order of the Mantlemass books differs from the
chronological reading order - some were written
retrospectively, but this is not apparent when reading
them, and unlike some series, I don't feel that the
retrospective books are in any way weaker than the rest.
For ease of reference I have listed and discussed the
books in correct reading order, with original publication
dates in brackets.

The Miller's Boy
(1976) is not the most powerful of the series, but is
well worth reading as a study of friendship. It also sets
the scene by introducing some of the important
characters. In 1479 the eponymous Thomas Welfare makes
friends with Lewis Mallory, lately come to live at Ghylls
Hatch, a horsebreeding farm not far from Mantlemass. They
have very different stations in life but their friendship
is strong. Lewis has been exiled from his family for
reasons he does not understand; Thomas is a staunch
friend, enabling Lewis to adjust to and accept his new
life in the forest. For their friendship to endure
however, Thomas must leave, rather than change the nature
of their relationship by staying on as a servant to
Lewis. As they part, Lewis gives Thomas his horse, and
Thomas gives Lewis his old red cap which is to become
Lewis's trademark.

The Lark and the
Laurel (1970) opens in 1485 at the end of the Wars of the
Roses. Cecily Jolland has been gently raised in London,
and is sent to her aunt Elizabeth's house of Mantlemass,
to be conveniently out of the way while her father flees
abroad.

Cecily has to
learn a very different way of life and amid the small
details of daily life at Mantlemass, she grows from a
cloistered girl into a stronger and more independent
person. Lewis Mallory of Ghylls Hatch is her first and
only love, but a half-remembered connection with a
lark-and-laurel ring and a childhood betrothal must be
resolved before they can marry. Cecily and Lewis will
generate the Mantlemass dynasty, and the story of their
childhood as political pawns is one of the most enjoyable
in the series.

The Sprig of
Broom (1971) is the story of Medley Plashet and his
search for his father, Dick Plashet. Medley's birth is a
mystery; who exactly is his father? What is the meaning
of the sprig of broom (Latin name of planta genista) and
the old book which hints at a connection with royalty? In
1506 Medley is taken into the household of Lewis and
Cecily Mallory and their children when his father
vanishes; he learns to love their daughter Catherine, but
must unravel the secret of his ancestry before he can win
her.

A Cold Wind
Blowing (1972) is set in the 1530s, and the Mallory and
Medley families are affected indirectly and personally by
the effects of the dissolution of the monasteries. Plans
for a new church have to be abandoned, the local
community of Priors is disbanded - and into Piers
Medley's life comes a strange silent girl, Isabella. Who
is she, and what is her secret? This is a disturbing and
powerful story, with twin themes of loss and continuity.

The Eldest Son
(1977) tells of illness and disaster at Ghylls Hatch, and
a quarrel which splits the Medleys. Medley Plashet's
eldest son Harry is set on being his own master, and is
more interested in ironworking than horsebreeding. After
a quarrel with his father, Harry and his young family
leave the forest for a new life as an ironmaster at his
wife's family home in Gloucestershire. Piers Medley will
take Harry's place as the eldest son at home, and the
secret of the sprig of broom will be passed down to him.

The Iron Lily
(1973) introduces Lilias Forstal. With no inheritance but
a crooked shoulder and an iron will, Lilias is a strong
and independent woman. She struggles to find her place in
the world and to solve the mystery of her birth and
identity. Running from home on her mother's death, she
has only the lark-and-laurel ring inherited from her
mother, as a clue to finding her unknown father. She
finds her way to the forest and makes a respected place
for herself as head of the iron workings at Plashets, and
is known as Master to her workmen. The ring eventually
identifies her as a Medley, illegitimate daughter to
Piers, though this can never be publicly acknowledged.
This link to the Mallory and Medley families connects her
more securely to her place and her work, and to old
secrets; whilst plans for the future are unfolding for
her daughter, Ursula.

A Flight of
Swans (1980) opens as the Spanish Armada sails on
England, and contrasts the fortunes of Humfrey and Roger
Jolland, guests and kinsmen of the Medleys of Mantlemass.
Humfrey rides off, hoping for battle, while Roger stays
at home, becoming an ironworker, Master of Plashets. For
political reasons and personal gain, Humfrey turns
traitor; while for family reasons, Roger betrays a trust.
This is also Ursula Medley's story; unhappily married,
she stays at Mantlemass watching the seasons, and the
changes brought by war and politics.

Harrow and
Harvest (1974) is the last Mantlemass novel. In the
1640s, Mantlemass is in decline, and there is uncertainty
over who the heir will be. With the advent of the Civil
War, the time comes for the Mantlemass household and
tenants to declare allegiance to Crown or Parliament. In
consequence, the household is bitterly divided; but out
of fire and disaster will come new beginnings for some,
both at home and in the New World.

The Keys of
Mantlemass (1981) is a collection of short stories,
bridging some gaps between the novels, and relating some
incidents in more detail. The collection enhances the
unity of the series and answers questions about some of
the minor characters. The final story provides the
finishing touch, bringing the Mantlemass story up to
date, with a young woman from the American branch of the
Medleys returning to the forest in search of her family
history.

The appeal of
the series is not just the plots and characters,
well-developed though these are; the independent-minded
heroines such as Dame Elizabeth, Cecily, and Lilias are a
delight, and the interplay of one character with another
is convincing. There are no simply good or bad
characters; Barbara Willard allows her characters to be
both complex and flawed. Throughout the series though,
there is a thread of large themes being played out on a
small stage; the reader can access this approach at a
variety of levels. It is possible just to enjoy the
localised story, appreciating the small homely details
and gaining a vivid sense of what it was like to live at
that time; but an enquiring reader will also want to know
something about the backdrop of history which drives the
plots. This is the best sort of historical fiction,
combining the sweep of history with a focussed
imagination in a way which will leave many readers
curious and wanting to find out more.

A sense of place
is central to the series; the particular blend of
ironworking and horsebreeding in a forest setting are
specific to Sussex, and this is quietly reinforced by
Barbara Willard's use of Sussex dialect and forest
idioms. Sussex bred, she had heard and absorbed the
Sussex dialect all her life. Her use of authentic forest
language and sentence structure effectively overcomes the
historical writer's dilemma of how to present period
dialogue; the result sounds natural and unlaboured, and
convincingly of its time and place. The sense of location
is reinforced by the isolation of Mantlemass in winter;
as well as contact with the wider world at other times of
the year. There are guests from London, kinsmen paying
visits; children sent to live in the country from other
environments. Their different customs and ways of
speaking are a contrast to the forest talk and manners;
those who come to stay tend to adapt their customs and
speech to the local ways, in time. Also reinforcing a
sense of place and stability is the continuity of Mallory
and Medley names; as the families intermingle, names and
their variants are repeated down the generations. Lewis,
Simon, Harry, Roger, Cecily, Catherine, Cecilia,
Susannah, Susan, Ursula. The names of Mallory and Medley,
sometimes surnames, are also given as first names to boys
as well as girls. In one of the stories in The Keys of
Mantlemass, the continuity of names is one factor in
enabling a modern American Celia to identify her Medley
family history. The name Richard, too, has a significance
linked to the sprig of broom. The lark-and-laurel emblem
also continues through the series, though by the end, its
meaning has been lost. Again and again, down the
generations, themes of identity, maturing and belonging
emerge; some characters have to leave the forest to find
their own path in life, whilst others find their true
place is at Mantlemass.

This is a highly
enjoyable series with much to recommend it, and I feel it
should be better known whilst copies are still relatively
easy to acquire. All the Mantlemass books are currently
out of print, so the would-be reader has a choice of
libraries or secondhand sources. I was surprised to find
that in my local area, the Hertfordshire library service
does not hold a Mantlemass set anywhere in the county. I
hope that other libraries may be better served. Some
titles were originally published by Longman, (later
Kestrel); some titles were reprinted as Puffin paperbacks
in the 1970s, and to the best of my knowledge all titles
appeared under the Macdonald imprint, in simultaneous
hardback and paperback editions, in the 1980s. However,
The Eldest Son, Flight of Swans and Keys of Mantlemass
did not appear in Puffin and so are rather harder to
find. The Macdonald editions seem difficult to find so I
wonder if these perhaps went mainly into library stocks.

Some titles, but
not the whole series, also appeared in American editions;
several in hardback editions by Harcourt Brace/Dutton in
the 1970s, and all except The Millers Boy and Keys of
Mantlemass in Dell Laurel Leaf paperbacks in 1989, under
a series heading "The Mantlemass Chronicles".
These are also now out of print. Secondhand hardbacks -
frequently ex library copies - do turn up reasonably
often in dealers' catalogues; they are inexpensive,
around £5.00. The Puffin paperbacks were reprinted and
should not be too difficult to find.

Barbara Willard
was a very private person; little was written about her
during her lifetime. She was single, and for years shared
her home in Ashdown Forest with a friend; while writing
the Mantlemass novels she wrote one long book each year,
and pursued interests such as gardening and motoring when
she could. She wrote other successful children's books
including historical novels for younger children, but the
Mantlemass books will be remembered as her major
achievement. She died in 1994.

Further
reading:

Barbara Willard:
entry in "Twentieth Century Children's Writers"

Elaine Moss
"Part of the Pattern" Bodley Head 1985;
interview with Barbara Willard, originally published in
Signal in 1972, "Barbara Willard and the Springs of
Mantlemass".

Copyright
Belinda Copson 1999. This article first appeared in Folly
Magazine No 27, July 1999.